Friday, October 9

Nighttime is always good for a few fights and you've caught a decent one.

A couple of guys from out of town got mugged and attacked with a knife. Nothing major, but the report in your mind already has the phrase "copious ETOH odor" so both are getting full c-spine precautions with various bruises forming on their faces and some superficial lacerations to their faces, necks and torsos.

Nothing worth screaming towards the trauma center for, but certainly taking your time for a full secondary assessment.

As you're completing C-spine precautions on the man on the bench seat and indicate your driver to go, a police officer jumps in the back and begins asking the men questions. Completely understandable, so you get a head start on your charting in the few moments he takes to finish up getting different descriptions from your patients, who are clearly intoxicated beyond remembering.

You exchange your professional courtesies and the officer climbs out and closes the door. As you begin to pull away from the curb, he opens the door and asks you to divert over 4 blocks for a lineup, they think they have the suspect in custody.

15 comments:

LadyHavoc
said...

No to the divert. If the patient is in c-spine precautions and intoxicated, the chances of him/her making a coherent ID of a suspect are slim to none. I would tell PD that the pt is on his way to ED and they can follow up there. I'm all for professional courtesy and departments working together, but patient care comes first.

Maybe if the patient wasnt fully immobilised, and explicitly stated he was either going to identify the assailant or would refuse to go to hospital (and I was worried about said patient) would I CONSIDER allowing the ID process.

I'm not EMS, so not qualified to answer. But I've got this picture in my head of y'all holding the backboard up so that the immobilized drunk can see the lineup. Cut to the scene it the courtroom, where the defendant's lawyer is asking the right questions to make it apparent to the jury that the identification was made by a drunk strapped to a board. And that's funny.

Pt. needs to go to the ER period end of story. That's just the way things are, you tx people to the ER or RMA and leave them on scene, those are your only options. Also, I'm willing to bet you'd be doing the PD a favor, any good defense attorney would get any identification by an intoxicated person thrown out really quickly. They'd be better off showing the vic's the different photos in the morning.

"That's a negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full." Patient care comes first and foremost. Besides, that's two supine, backboarded drunks in the back of my unit and time is ticking on the vomit clock :)

Negative on the divertion. The police officers can handle that later after the patients have been seen by the doctors. Your ambulance is a valuable resource and it needs to be in service as soon as possible. The police shouldn't have asked you to divert.

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